November, December, January Book Reviews

Somewhere between work, ski season, and the holiday crafting frenzy, I've slipped 3 months behind. Arg! I haven't done tons of reading, but the ones I did make it through were substantial. Here goes...

1. Y The Last Man, V. 9, Brian K. Vaughan et al., Rating: 4.5
Finally, a major plot reveal! After nearly a year of globe trotting, we learn the source of the epidemic. It's a good installment.
2 & 3. Fables, V.8 & 9, Bill Willingham et al., Rating: 4.5
As always, excellent. Beautiful artwork, compelling story.
4. How Doctors Think, Jerome Groopman, Rating: 3.9
This was a nice counterpoint to October's medical read, Better. Both take on the subject of how doctors interact with patients, and how they can learn to give better care. While I think Gawande is a stronger writer, this book is well-written and insightful. If you care about the subject, read both.
5. Ride with Me, Mariah Montana, Ivan Doig, Rating: 2.9
The final installment of Doig's Montana trilogy, Ride with Me is a pale shadow of the previous two books. Stick with English Creek.
6. Intuition, Allegra Goodman, Rating: 1.9
This book was doomed from the beginning. It's a legal thriller, of sorts, packed with sexual harassment, workplace drama, mistaken love affairs, and emotional drama. Goodman clearly understands the office politics of the environment she's describing. It's just that the environment is so boring. Seriously - who wants to read about the day-to-day squabbles of 15 medical researchers? Working with mice? Nice try, but it doesn't work.
7. California History, Harr Wagner and Mark Keppel, Rating: 4.0
I found this book - published in 1927 - at the Napa Library book sale about a year ago. The package itself beautiful - embossed red cloth with blue line drawings, thin glossy paper, dozens of photographs. It looks great on a shelf, with my collection of other orange books (the only color I have a section for - they just look so nice together). The book itself is mixed. It's often charming and sweet, often wrong, and, at times, horribly racist. Native Americans don't fair well at all - there are 2 chapters devoted to their "laziness". I wouldn't give this book to anyone to read, but as a snapshot of the time period, it's great.
8. Severance, Robert Olen Butler, Rating: 2.0
Butler gets a big gold star for a clever idea. This book is a series of essays cataloging the final thoughts of people between beheading and death - roughly two pages per person. The people are interesting (Marie Antoinette, for example), the thoughts intriguing. However. He makes no distinction between people who know that they're going to die and those who don't. I think it's a huge line that must be drawn, and it's a critical error.
9. The Good Earth, Pearl S. Buck, Rating: 4.8
I really liked this book. It's moving, interesting, full of complex characters, and brings to life a world that's extremely foreign.
10. The Executioner's Song, Norman Mailer, Rating: 3.7
I understand the hype around this book - the research is voluminous, the writing considered and detailed, the character exploration nearly bottomless. Unfortunately for the average reader, it's over 1000 pages long. And you know the conclusion from page 1. It...just...drags....on.
11. The Abstinence Teacher, Tom Perrota, Rating: 3.0
Perrota's Election was genius - the biting humor of the movie owes everything to Perrota's writing. Little Children was inspired, too. This book, unfortunately, is average. It's fine - but nothing more. The anger and wittiness of his previous books is missing. From another writer, this is a decent effort, but from Perrota it's a major disappointment.